Remote controllers for various appliances were originally wired to the appliances, such as a remote control for a television set or VCR. Eventually remote controls became wireless, a very popular mode of operation using infrared electromagnetic energy emitted from the remote control to an infrared receiver connected to a television converter, a television set or a VCR.
With the proliferation of additional types of appliances in a home such as video cassette recorders (VCRs), video disc players, and several television sets, each of which usually requiring a different code, a different dedicated remote control is required to control each appliance. In order to avoid a proliferation of remote controls, learning remote controls were invented. A single learning remote control typically stores; control sequences for controlling various appliances. Two patents which describe learning remote controls are U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,114 issued Jan. 31st, 1989 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,88?issued Nov. 18th, 1986.
In order to program a learning remote control, a dedicated remote control is positioned nose-to-nose (spaced a short distance) with the learning remote control. The learning remote control is placed in a learning mode, certain switches are operated in order to establish a memory location dedicated to storing data relating to particular functions, and the dedicated remote control corresponding switch is operated. As a result infrared data signals are transmitted from the dedicated remote control to the learning remote control whereby the data sequence is received and stored. The stored data can be accessed by a switch dedicated to a particular function, and the stored corresponding control sequence is transmitted via infrared energy to the appliance to be controlled, in place of the dedicated remote control. This function is repeated for each of the control keys for which the learning remote control is to be used. The data sequences for several different appliances can be stored associated with keys dedicated to the various appliances.
It has been found that the process for teaching the remote control the various sequences is tedious, has been difficult to learn to perform properly, and indeed cannot be followed properly by some people. This results in the storage of incorrect data or no data in the learning remote control, and thus it cannot be used to properly control the appliances. For this reason other techniques for storing a program for invoking specialized functions have been tried, such as the use of dedicated number sequences published in popular media such as newspapers, to allow a user to key in those number sequences from a remote control into e.g. a VCR, programming it. However this does not facilitate remote control of e.g. a TV set, channel changing, control of the on and off sequence or channel switching of a VCR, track switching on a video disc player, control of audio equipment, etc., and therefore is highly limited and is inherently specialized to only a very small group of functions, to the programming of a VCR.
One service provides storage of codes to control various VCRs etc. in the remote control, but the remote control must be sent to the manufacturer for updating and electrical storage of codes in RAM of the control unit. Storage is sufficiently complicated and technical that it cannot be done by the user. While the control unit is being sent away, the owner cannot use it, and there is risk of loss or damage when it is being sent away. This procedure must be done each time there is to be an update of the stored data. Clearly this is inconvenient and an objectionable procedure from the point of view of the user. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,810 issued Sep. 25th, 1990, invented by Paul V. Darbee et al.
Clearly previous techniques for teaching a remote control have been either difficult to impossible to use by some people, inconvenient or are inherent limited.